AuthorTopic: What were they doing with 50's music in the US? (Read 13777 times)

My bet is that tuners have saved more tracks than they've ruined. At least that's been my experience. I still remember fighting with other band members about their inability to tune by ear - all that went away the day we got a tuner. Then we could just fight about the music...

String instruments are fret-less, so they play by ear and just need to be in the same ballpark. Guitars and bass however have fixed fret points so they must be in tune and intonated correctly to get any emotion out of them. Pianos usually hold tune for a while because they are only struck with soft hammers and the strings dont get squeezed and pulled like other instruments. Perfect tuning is vital in todays environment, especially if you want to catch the ear of the ipod pogo punk generation thats coming up whose brains are conditioned to perfectly organized immediate gratification!!!!!!

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"When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point." -Alan Watts

...Guitars and bass however have fixed fret points so they must be in tune and intonated correctly to get any emotion out of them...

Paging Chuck Berry

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"When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point." -Alan Watts

Some people tune their guitars/basses/horns to a tuner and never think about pitch again. There are all kinds of things that affect tuning of a track once the guitars are "in tune". The most obvious is setup and intonation. Others are the age of strings - there's this crazy idea that new strings don't stay in tune. They do after the first five minutes if you break them in correctly. Also the gauge of the strings is important - any guitar designed in the fifties was designed for much heavier strings than are generally used today. Heavier strings have much better intonation than skinny ones all up and down the neck. Even though the frets stop the strings hand technique has a huge impact on pitch. If you've never experienced that, hold a note down on a bass and then squeeze softer and harder with your left hand - you can hear the pitch change. Same with the right hand - fret a note and hit it harder and softer with your right hand - the volume is not the only thing that changes. A properly intonated and tuned instrument played by someone with inconsistent hand technique, bass in particular, can leave a track with an ambiguous and moving tonal center that nothing else can be in tune with including drums. My personal feeling is that very often trying to EQ or compress bass to make it defined is an attempt to make up for the weak pitch center left by an inconsistent player.

They were called records because they were just that; a record of a performance. That's the where the magic lies. A bunch of talented people all playing together in the same room at the same time with the same goal.

No rewinding, no redoing your part, no punching in, no overdubbing and no editing. Forget about eq and compression, let alone beat correcting and pitch correcting. If you made a major mistake, the media was wasted. Imagine being in an orchestra with that pressure.

Imagine just being a person before there was TV, stereo, home video, and video games. There was a time when having musical and live entertaining ability was a highly valued social skill. It's why you used to see stores that did nothing but sell, transport and service pianos. Lots of homes had them. That was your entertainment center.

EDIT: Sorry, didn't mean to drift OT. But yeah, more people participating, fewer of them being chosen.

Paul

Around the turn of the previous century, there were an estimated 7000 shops in the US building pianos. I've often thought we could get this country back on track by going to every household, removing all but one television, and replacing those with a piano.

I've often thought we could get this country back on track by going to every household, removing all but one television, and replacing those with a piano.

I don't understand. What do you need even one TV for?

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Music can make me get right up out of my chair and start dancing or it can get me so pumped up I have to walk around the block. It can also knock me back and make me sit there and cry like a little baby. This shit is as powerful as any drug!!! - Larry DeVivo